2-factor Facebook Login with Third Party Apps

The Fabric Blog
3 min readJul 19, 2018

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Back when we, the Fabric founders, worked on the early Facebook Platform team, ca. 2010, we were really excited to contribute to and launch the Facebook login feature on third party websites and apps.

It took away the burdensome process of creating an account on every new service we encountered as users.

But with the increasing popularity of 2-factor authentication systems in the last few years, using Facebook login on third party mobile apps, such as Fabric, can often get tricky and confusing.

In some cases, you may be able to log in without issues. However, in others, in particular when your alternate method of authentication is Facebook’s own Code Generator, you may well have to jump through hoops. In those problematic cases, you will need to begin by providing your Facebook login credentials, and that’s when things may get complicated.

Whether it’s Fabric or any other app that you’re using Facebook to log into, here’s a basic outline of the process that may help you if you get stuck along the way of logging into the app as a Code Generator user:

  1. After you’re prompted for will initially likely see some version of this page asking you to enter your Facebook credentials.
  2. After you enter those, if using 2-factor auth, you will see the next screen asking you for a login code from you “Code Generator”.

3. If you have the Facebook app, you can now open that and find the Code Generator feature under the menu tab, via the button on the bottom right. Make sure to scroll down until you see “Code Generator”.

4. Tap “Code Generator” and you’ll see the code you need. Hold your finger down on it to get it copied.

5. Now go back to the original app you were trying to log into. Paste the code there.

6. At this point, you should see the “Confirm Login” Facebook screen and tap “Continue”, which should take you back to the original point in the app where you began the Facebook login process.You’re done!

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The Fabric Blog

Fabric helps you remember the places you go, the people you meet, and the things you do. http://www.fabric.me